Alexey Sergienko

Biography

From 1989 to 1992 Alexey Sergienko stood on a St. Petersburg street and sold porcelain items that he painted himself. By day he worked as an artist at a factory, and at the same time he studied at a university. By some accounts, this was the Herzen Pedagogical University, where he trained as a physical education teacher; there is no full confirmation.

He was born on 29 November 1968 in Leningrad.

Street trading led to his first organisational project. By some accounts, in 1991 he founded the Center for the Support of the Arts in St. Petersburg, a public organisation that brings together street artists and folk craftsmen. In 2020 the center became the long-term tenant of a former filtration and ozonation station on Penkovaya Street. After renovation it is meant to become a contemporary art center, the Art Station. By one account, in 2000 Sergienko opened a museum dedicated to Viktor Tsoi, the Soviet rock musician; this is hard to verify.

For a long time his work was described as pop art and political art; he then moved on to actionism, performance, installation and sculpture. His best-known motif is “Daisies”, a painting of 2012, and the flower went on to recur in almost every work he made. In the same year he transferred the print of “Daisies” onto the entire surface of his own BMW X6 and turned the car into an art object. Later came the “Bus of Happiness”, an ordinary scheduled bus decorated with daisies. Among his performances are “I Invite You to My Funeral”, in which the artist held his own funeral, and “Yoga Is an Art” in the General Staff Building of the Hermitage in 2016, as part of the exhibition “Realisms”. He teaches yoga by his own method.

The most discussed part of his work is the portraits of Vladimir Putin. The collection “President. A Man of the Kindest Soul” consists of paintings, some of which are reported to be in the Kremlin, the State Duma, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Federation Council. In 2014 chocolate with reproductions on the wrappers was issued on the basis of it. The collection “Rodina” (“Motherland”) followed: Kremlin stars, birch trees, nesting dolls, daisies and the president himself. In 2014 a clothing brand was made from it, and in 2015 a furniture collection. In 2016, for Putin’s birthday, the exhibition “Emotions of the World” was shown, assembled from photographs in the media and recording the range of expressions on the head of state’s face. There are also works from 2017 and 2022 with the same subject; all of this is sometimes described as part of a personality cult, but I would leave that judgement to those who make it rather than to the artist’s biography.

Other projects deal with emotions and childhood. “Time Machine” is conceived as an object that returns people to childhood. “Museum of Emotions” is an interactive museum about emotional intelligence; Dmitry Ozerkov, head of the contemporary art department of the State Hermitage, wrote of it that a visit gives an impetus to the development of emotional intelligence. Sergienko has also made monuments: to Alexander II on the grounds of the Academy of the Investigative Committee, and to Anton Devier, the first police chief of St. Petersburg, commissioned by the Ministry of Internal Affairs. In all, by his own count, he has realised more than a thousand projects.

With the billionaire Igor Rybakov he made “Money Throne X10”, a glass throne with a million dollars inside; it was presented in Moscow in 2019 at Art Residence. In October 2020 his graffiti appeared on the façade of a residential complex in Murino, which he dedicated to medical workers fighting the coronavirus. In the spring of 2021 the drawing was entered in the Russian Book of Records.

His exhibitions are held mainly in St. Petersburg and Moscow. Abroad he has been shown at ArtExpoNewYork in 2013, at the Carousel du Louvre in Paris in 2014 and in Senigallia, Italy, in 2018; he has also taken part in exhibitions in Switzerland. From 2015 to 2019 he was a regular participant in the VK Fest festival in St. Petersburg, and in 2020 he took part in Art Russia in Moscow. Sergienko lives and works in his own gallery next to the Kazan Cathedral.